Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/53

 travelled. He read the letter from the pulpit, and said it was quite true, and that if the writer would come to the vestry with a saddle and bridle he would ride him home.

"Remember, I beseech you," said a preacher, "that we are all sailing down the stream of time, and must inevitably land, at last, in the great ocean of eternity."

As Quin and Foote one day walked out To view the country round, In merry mood they chatting stood, Hard by the village pound. Foote from his poke a shilling took. And said, "I'll bet a penny, In a short space, within this place, I'll make this piece a guinea."

Upon the ground, within the pound. The shilling soon was thrown; "Behold," said Foote, "the thing's made out, For there is one pound one." "I wonder not," says Quin, "that thought Should in your head be found, Since that's the way your debts you pay— One shilling in the pound."

Sheridan was one day much annoyed by a fellow member of the House of Commons, who kept crying out every few minutes, "Hear! hear!" During the debate he took occasion to describe a political contemporary that wished to play rogue but had only sense enough to act fool. "Where," exclaimed he, with great emphasis, "where shall we find a more foolish knave or a more knavish fool than he?" "Hear! hear!" was shouted by the troublesome member. Sheridan turned round, and, thanking him for the prompt information, sat down amid a general roar of laughter.

During a debate of the Hardwicke Debating Society in the Temple, while the retirement of Mr Parnell was still undecided by the Irish Party, a speaker was contrasting Mr Parnell's offence